I haven’t told too many people this, but effective September 1st, 2010, I will be a partner in PhysicalAddictions.com, a very large bodybuilding and vitamin supplements online store. I will have a fairly size-able stake in the website and I’ll be working hard to make the website even bigger than it already is. This is in conjunction to all of my other clients, APRSBB, TwiceText.com and our new Brilliant Innovations Group project which will be launched soon.

Let’s not forget about school! I know that for most of you I have been completely evading the subject of school for a while; so it’s time to clear some air…. with some bullet points!

• I have completed all of my degree requirements at BCC, I WILL be graduating at the end of this semester with an A.S. in Computer Programming and Analysis.
• With any sort of luck I will be entering FIT in the Spring, UCF is the backup plan.
• The goal right now is to dual major with degrees in Computer Science and Business Finance
• Yes, I will be working a lot while going to school a lot, but guess what, nobody said being awesome was easy.
• If any of the above changes, I will let you know

So that clears that up and gets you updated to everything that’s been going on with life. Now it’s time to switch gears a little bit.

Without being too arrogant, I wanted to make a list of things that I like to do to keep myself awesome… Just a few tips and pointers, you can take them or leave them, but I’m just putting them out there… So here they are.

1. Work your ASS off!

   As you can see above, I’m doing A LOT of work right now, A TON, actually. I’m not really tied down or completely committed to anyone or anything (aka wife or kids), so I can pretty much go crazy and work hard so that one day, maybe, I can fulfill my ultimate dream of having the house on dragon point (more on that on a different day).

   I feel like if I work hard now, not only will I be rewarded later, but I’ll also also feel better about everything I’ve done. As potentially tacky as it is, one of my best friends’ dad once told me “Chris, you’re going to look in the mirror one day and realize you built it all from the ground up.” It’s so true, I have complete faith that I will have something worth pointing to one day and saying “Chris Struttmann,” and I’ll take pride in the fact that I DID IT.

   Bottom line: work hard while you can! Eventually you’ll be tied down and working hard becomes harder to do.

2. Don’t be afraid to be absolutely ecstatic about what you’re doing

   The thing is, the fact that you’re actually doing something is in itself something worth talking about! If you’re not excited about what you’re doing, how is anybody else going to be excited about it? Yes, the chances are, you might look dumb, but who cares? Because the people that cast you as being dumb, are far inferior to your awesomeness; chances are, they’re not doing too much with their lives. The people that can relate to your excitement are really your target audience, they’re the people that will help you build connections and eventually achieve your goals.

3. Don’t go changin’

   People change themselves naturally over the years, especially at my age (myself definitely included). This is a given. However, the minute you start changing yourself to conform to someone or something, you have lost the game and you need to go back to square one. Further down the road, you will look back and you’ll hate yourself for it. This ties into the next one perfectly.

4. Live life without regrets…

   … instead have learning experiences. I’ve done some dumb things in my life, but guess what, they’re all things that I’ve learned from and I’m a better person because of it. It’s that simple.

5. Do NOT forget to spend time with the ones who made you who you are

   If you’ve read this article all the way to this point and haven’t given up, then this is one is just as important as #1. This is true for everyone but especially true for me: your friends, family and all the other people that you Love are the ones that made you who you are. These people are the ones that are going to give you the best feedback you could ever get. They’ll tell you when you really are over-doing it, when you’re being a downright ass, and when your head isn’t on straight. On the balance sheet of life, these people are your highest valued assets.

   Besides, if you create something massive but you’ve blown your friends off while doing it, who’s going to come to all of your parties?

So these are just some of the rules that I like to live by, I thought I’d share.

A word on TwiceText
We are absolutely not stopping development on TwiceText.com. The greatest college textbook exchange continues to grow every semester and we’re currently in the process of expanding the site to give greater benefit to more students.

Closing Remarks
We had this idea. We think we can run with it. The development cost is low and the risk isn’t terribly high. We think we can do some damage.

BIG continues to be awesome, and as long as that keeps happening, masses of individuals (and now companies) will have the opportunity to benefit.

My first fear is that I’m turning twenty! This is the end of my teenage years, the end of an era (as I’ve been saying all day)! There’s a preconceived notion in society today that teenagers are inherently irresponsible; for the most part, I agree. It’s an interesting time in your life, especially in this day and age! You’re growing up, you’re graduating high school, you’re getting girl friends, you’re going to college, you’re partying, whatever you’re doing, chances are there’s some element of irresponsibility. Society accepts that level of irresponsibility. My initial feeling is that in one hour and nine minutes, society is going to take that acceptance away from me and in those 4,140 seconds between now and midnight, I’m supposed to all the sudden start acting like a responsible adult. My under-developed frontal cortex is screaming at me “but I don’t wanna!” but yet my under-developed frontal cortex doesn’t have the power to stop time.

My second fear is that I’m turning twenty! People that know me will tell you that I work hard. People that are close to me will tell you that I work really hard, and play hard. I will tell you that I feel like I work my ass off; I’m the only person who knows how stressful it is to be Christopher Struttmann. Please don’t mistake me, I’m definitely NOT trying to start a pity-party, I’m not that person. I DO want to impress upon everyone that I work extremely hard. I’ve spent the last three years of my life working as a hard-core student and a hard-core software developer. But I’m still turning 20; I’m entering a new phase in my life yet I don’t have too much to show for all the hard work I did in the last phase. People say to me, “Well Chris, relatively speaking, you’re nineteen and you’re wildly successful for your age.” And yes, it’s true, I do sit in on a 3-way partnership of a company that without a doubt is going to change the world one way or another (believe me, we’re DETERMINED). Yes, I have created some spectacular software that is being used in all sorts of fields of industry. And yes, I do own another company that inked it’s first business deal only a week and a half after incorporating. Yet, as of this moment, exactly fifty minutes before I’m twenty years old, I don’t have a whole lot to prove it all! It’s mostly vapor! Right now, you’re probably saying “well, why in the world do you feel like you have to prove yourself?” and I say, I don’t… but it’d be really awesome if I could!

So that’s what I’m going to spend the next few years doing! I can’t stop time, so it’s ridiculous to spend time working myself up over the first fear, so I’m not going to. However, I can do something about the second one. Not only am I going to continue doing the awesome things that I do, I’m going to turn that vapor into tangible success. Not tangible in terms of me tooling around in a Porsche, but in the terms of me being able to point to something MASSIVE and saying, “Chris Struttmann.” I’m going to make sure that everyone, and I do mean everyone, knows that I’m Christopher Edward Struttmann, and I’m here to put a giant dent in the world!

It is now 25 minutes until the start of a new era.

First let’s pick out some things that are important to me:

• Manual Transmission (automatics are too much to repair)
• 170 HP MINIMUM(Christine had 210)
• Rear wheel drive. Though not mandatory, I’d really really like to have a RWD car
• Convertibles are good. Even if you don’t use it that often, it’s amazing when you do.
• Coupe. My last car was 2-door and it worked out GREAT.

Now here are some cars that I like that (for the most part) match the above criterion and their respective likely-ness of actually happening.

• Infiniti G37S Coupe (very slim to none)
• Mid 2000s Infiniti G35 Coupe (low)
• Mid 2000s Nissan 350Z (low)
• Mid/Late 90s Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo (medium)
• Mid/Early 2000s Honda S2000 (medium to medium-high), this is one of the ones that I REALLY want
• Late 90s/Early 2000s Honda Prelude (medium to medium-high), though doesn’t fit the RWD criteria
• Chrysler Crossfire (low). This thing is ODDLY growing on me, normally I hate it, but it HAS to be in Black
• Late 90s BMW Z3 Coupe (low, based on limited availability). The Coupe is EXTREMELY hard to find, but they’re SOOOO sweet looking
• Late 90s/Early 2000s Mercedes SLK Roadster (low). Again, it’d have to be in a good color.
• Mid 2000s MAZDASPEED 3 Hatchback (medium). Has to be the MAZDASPEED edition though, or else it’s garbage.
• I’m sure I’ll be adding to the list as I think of new cars…

The Celebration!
A lot of people know that I’m the co-founder of a very small company called Brilliant Innovations Group, L.L.C. (BIG for short); if you don’t know this, I’m now telling you this, “I’m the co-founder of a company that goes by ‘Big.’” Starting a company was an amazing process to go through: filing papers with the state, opening bank accounts, reading and writing operating agreements, taxes, it’s all part of the experience.

Brilliant Innovations Group owns a website called TwiceText.com, TwiceText is a free, localized listing service for college textbooks that we launched in July of 2009. Think of your favorite online classifieds website, limit it to textbooks and instead of dividing it up by area, divide it up by school. Voila, you have TwiceText.com, which is our first ever public product; since two of the three company partners are college students, we’re pretty excited about it.

Today, we’re especially excited about our product: we made our first-ever generated revenue. What does this mean? It means that people saw some ads on our site, found them interesting, and clicked on them! Granted, we didn’t make much money at all, but it’s the proof of concept that we needed to say to ourselves, “this is actually working!” That confirmation compliments our confidence and is the kind of thing that keeps us motivated to continue doing what we do.

BIG and myself
When I tell people that I own a small company they say “well, what does your company do?” This question actually throws me for a loop; because we’re not a typical company, we can’t be categorized by one or two words. Yes, we own a product called TwiceText, but TwiceText is a piece of a bigger picture. So first we’ll start with what we are NOT, and then we’ll go in to what we ARE.

At Brilliant Innovations Group, L.L.C. we’re not engineers that design things to solve complex mathematical problems. BIG isn’t a company founded on the basis of exploiting millions in order to get rich; we’re not a company that’s exclusive mission is to revolutionize the way you act or interact. The Brilliant Innovations Group is a team of people that want to develop things that solve everyday problems for everyday people. We are innovators; we love developing things that will make millions of peoples’ lives easier, and we love executing our mission. I think that’s all I need to say.

Many of you know, I live near the Kennedy Space Center in Melbourne, FL; I get to see the shuttle launch from my driveway or typically, I’ll go to the beach for the big show.

Every time I watch the rocket launch I get chills down my spine at how purely awesome it is that hundreds if not thousands of people are working to launch four people into space. But I also take time to recognize the historical events that lead up to this event.

In the 1950s, America decided that they were going in to space; at the time this was purely a defensive measure against the USSR. Both of my grandfathers were involved in the space program, indirectly. One of my grandfathers was a computer specialist for the Mercury and Gemini missions, and the other worked on data encoding boxes for the Apollo missions. I’m not fully briefed on the history of the space program but for all intents and purposes we’ll assume that the space program was defined around 1955. As most know, the space program wasn’t very successful in the early days, there were lots of successes, but also lots of failures. America continued to develop and refine their technologies though, and in the short short time between 1955 and 1969, we were able to rocket humans to the moon. If you think about it, that’s a major accomplishment for fourteen years. It was an exciting time to be an American!

This is where my post splits into two defined segments. And they’re slightly contradictory, but again, it’s a brain-dump.

Segment One: The Current(ish).
Had we not gone to space in the 50s, 60s and 70s, America would be nowhere near where it is today. But assume for a minute that we didn’t go. If America, today, was tasked with going to the moon, there’s no way that we could accomplish everything that happened in the mid 20th century within the same time frame. Why? The process has become way too bureaucratic, America has become too judgmental, too skeptical. We would go through phases where money would come from congress, but then eventually people would start questioning the program, and long story short, WE’D NEVER GO.

America has become a series of bureaucratic processes in which the government has effectively limited our growth potential because we’re too safe, we don’t want to take any risks. I’ve got news. America is all about taking risk. It’s very hard for me to express my thoughts in the form of words, but I hope that you can understand my point. Democrats want “change.” That’s all they want as a matter of fact; change that will cause government to get bigger, more bureaucratic, and spend more money. Change that will choke programs like the space program. Yes, there are some issues in America that need to be ironed out, but by-and-large, America works! And as long as the average American remains somewhat competent, they’ll vote out whatever they don’t like, over time. That’s the way it’s always been, and that’s the way it will continue to be as long as America continues to exist.

Segment two: America’s Mark on the World
The French claim they invented democracy, the Romans could be credited with creating modern day cities and civilization, the Myans can be credited with creating the concept of dates, times and calendars, there’s lots of credit being given in the history books; the question is “what’s America going to get credited with?” A lot of European countries mock America because their history is far longer than ours and the only thing we’ve ever contributed to the world is the concept of the burger and fast-food. The next paragraph is for those countries.

America has created so many technologies, it’s ridiculous. We’ve pioneered the computer chip, information technology, electricity, air travel, efficient train travel, the automobile, all of these things happened on American turf; however, these innovations are not what we’ll be put in the history books for. America was the FIRST country to create an environment where innovation is celebrated. Previously, innovation was driven out of need, American innovation is driven out of desire; that’s what America will be put in the history books for.

Thanks,
Chris Struttmann

-Chris

            For years and years accepted minimum driving age was sixteen years; teens have begun to accept this privilege as a right and in that same process they’ve lost their responsible driver status. The following report will examine the causes and effects of a low driving age in today’s world, examine some of the results in some states already taken action, look at the economic impacts and finally discuss the parent’s perspective.
             In 2007, AAA issued a report with some absolutely alarming statistics regarding drivers of the fifteen to twenty age group. The very first statistic is says that sixteen year-olds have a 300% higher chance of dying in a car crash. The report continues to say that in 2006, drivers between the age of fifteen and twenty accounted for approximately thirteen percent of drivers in fatal crashes. A similar report conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety in 2005 shows that thirty-eight percent of teen drivers were speeding at the time of the accident. Furthermore, twenty-four percent of teen drivers had been drinking at the time of accident and sixty-six percent of teen drivers were not wearing seatbelts.
             A proposal to raise the minimum driving age to eighteen would greatly reduce all of the above statistics. Some states have already begun to raise the driving age to 17: New York, New Jersey and Ohio are among those states; since the bill has passed in those states, they’ve been able to enjoy far fewer accidents and fatalities, according to the NHTSA, thirty percent fewer.
             If teen drivers were to account for twenty-seven percent of drivers on the road today: creating this rule would greatly reduce traffic on local roads. The average driver might not think about this is much but next time you’re stuck in traffic look at how many cars you can see, and then say that for every 10 cars, roughly 3 of them can disappear. In that same traffic jam you might the cheapest gas station in town, they’re advertising a gallon of regular, eighty-seven octane gas for three dollars and fifty cents per gallon. If twenty-seven percent of drivers left the roads tomorrow, demand would fall, simple math and common sense would allow you to arrive at the conclusion that supply would go up; when supply goes up, prices go down. Well that same three dollar and fifty cent gallon of gas would become a, roughly, two dollar and fifty-five cent gallon of gas. At twenty thousand miles per year at twenty miles per gallon, that’s an annual savings of nine hundred and forty-five hundred dollars per year.
 An opponent of raising the driving age might state that by raising the driving age, you’re not preventing deaths, but simply delaying them. Such statement is blatantly incorrect, referring to the NHTSA report used above to list states that have already begun raising the driving age, it’s found that these states still have a learner’s-permit like system implemented; such systems allow younger drivers to gain experience while still under a parents control.
 In 2006, the state of Maryland adopted a law that didn’t allow teen driver’s to have any passengers in the vehicle while they were driving. The state cited a study that indicated that your risk of being in an accident as a sixteen year old driver doubles when you have one or more passengers in the car with you. Hillary Heubeck, a sixteen year-old driver told the Washington Post “Not everybody is stupid,” and continues her statement saying that she doesn’t feel that everyone should be punished because some teens are “young and stupid.” The sad reality is, remarks like “not everybody is stupid” demonstrates the exact kind of arrogance that get teens killed in the very first place; this point is validated with research from USA Today showing that the portion of the brain that is responsible for weighing risks versus what controls are at hand isn’t fully developed until the age of twenty five and furthermore, doesn’t begin developing until you’re seventeen.
             That same USA Today report brings to light another very interesting point: with our current rules and regulations, all of the above statistics are only bound to get worse. When printed in 2005, the article states that a less than even amount of baby-boomer’s kids are old enough to be getting on the road; in the next five to seven years we could see an influx of teen drivers to the amount of 17.5 million over the next 5 years; the time to change these laws is now, not after all of these new drivers are given their first piece of plastic to keep in their wallets.
             Another concern is the economic impact: if all these teenagers aren’t being allowed to drive, what’s going to happen to the car market? There is no research on how many cars are bought each year due to new drivers being put on the road. However, a logical approach can be used to answer this question: if a law were to be passed that drivers had to wait until the age of eight-teen to get their license, that’d mean that all of those potential drivers would need to wait two years before getting a car. After those two years the car market, if it were to suffer a loss at all, would be back to normal as all of the same drivers would be looking for cars.
             The used car market isn’t the only economic factor that would, potentially, be changed by the rise of the driving age: all of these crashes and deaths ring up medical bills that insurance companies and the U.S. Government are forced to pay. A brand new 2008 Report issued by AAA calculates the total on that bill to be over thirty four billion dollars; to put that into perspective, that’s over fifty percent more than what the United States Government is prepared to front to bail out America’s automotive industry. Most of that money will come from the American tax-payer.

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            The final issue being addressed is the parent’s perspective. Almost all of the cited material in this report quotes a parent who does not want to have to act as a “taxi” service of sorts. There is absolutely no research on this; it’s something that has to be dealt with almost exclusively on a case-by-case basis. It can, however, be said that America’s schools have an established bus system to transport our students to and from school and if such law were to take affect, America would need to take some time to create a better public transportation system. It’s possible that Congress could use a small piece of that annual thirty four billion dollars to shape up our public transportation system. Turning to Europe for an answer is one way to look at this: an article from cut-the-knot.org has acquired and translated information from a German driving school. In Germany, you must be over eighteen to get your license, you must have completed two years of a probation license (similar to our learner’s permits), if you have had any violations during the probation period you must start the probation period over, and finally twenty eight hours of in-class driver draining and thirty-five hours of on-road driving school. There is no solid English statistics on deaths caused by teen driving in Germany, but there is a statistic that shows in 1998, there were 7,792 deaths on German roads (safecarguide.com); that figure is for the entire German population, not just teens and it’s just above the amount of road deaths in this country solely among teenagers.
             The simple facts are: the amount of teen deaths while behind the wheel of a car in America is simply alarming. We’re behind the rest of the world in this movement to change the driving age and we need to do something fast before we have even more under-developed, inexperienced drivers on the road. This topic can be debated for hours on end but at the end of the day, you must look at the big picture. Is it going to be an inconvenience for some? Absolutely. I’m not going to write this with the notion that this wouldn’t require some drastic change among Americans, but after all, isn’t that what the President-elect is touting? Change? Why can’t safer roads with more responsible drivers be one of those changes? Along with the infinite list of side effects such as the forcing of public transportation to improve, zero 15-18 teen drunk driving, lower demand on gasoline and less traffic. Let’s not forget about the millions of lives.